This invention relates to a structure of a connector for use in connecting, for example, a card or the like.
A card connector is used in a mobile apparatus, such as a notebook-type personal computer (PC), a mobile telephone, and a personal digital assistant (PDA). The card connector is disposed at an end portion of an electric or an electronic apparatus in order to facilitate insertion and removal of a card. Depending upon a structure of a housing to which the card connector is mounted and an intended use of the apparatus, use is selectively made of one of two types of card connectors, i.e., a one-slot type adapted to receive one card or a two-slot type adapted to receive two cards.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. H10-289772 discloses a card connector which can be selectively used as the one-slot type and the two-slot type. The card connector is adapted to be mounted to a board such as a printed circuit board and comprises a first connector and a second connector stacked on the first connector. The first and the second connectors are adapted to receive different cards, respectively.
In order to fix the first and the second connectors to the board, use is made of a nut fixed to the second connector and a screw member penetrating the board from its back surface to be engaged with the nut. In this case, no nut is used in the first connector.
However, if the card connector is used as the one-slot type, the nut must be fixed to the first connector. Thus, depending upon whether the card connector is used as the one-slot type or the two-slot type, the nut is fixed to a different object. Therefore, two types of the first connectors with and without the nut are required.
Further, the distance between the board and the nut is different between the one-slot type and the two-slot type. Therefore, an assembly maker of the card connector must provide two different kinds of screw members different in length from each other.
On the other hand, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. H6-162282 discloses a card connector in which a two-slot structure is implemented by clamping two card guides using U-shaped metal members and fixing the card guides and the metal members using bolts and nuts.
However, if the two-slot type structure is changed into a one-slot type structure, two different types of screw members different in length must be provided as described above. Thus, the above-mentioned problem is not solved.
Further, proposal is also made of a card connector in which a two-slot type structure is implemented by combining one-slot type structures with U-shaped metal members fixed thereto, respectively. In this case, there is a disadvantage that the different U-shaped metal members must be provided in one-to-one correspondence to the one-slot type structures.